


Creation

by MaddyHughes



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e05 Coquilles, First Kiss, Fluff, Hannibal Lecter Being an Asshole, Legos, M/M, Sweet, Will Graham Has A Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 08:15:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9875819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddyHughes/pseuds/MaddyHughes
Summary: A Hannigram first-kiss story, with Lego, written for @william_grahams's birthday, by @LegoHannibal.Art commissioned from @JailHouseKing, http://aeroplaneblues.tumblr.com





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlinghogwarts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlinghogwarts/gifts).



> This begins during the conversation between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham about the Angel-maker killer, in Season 1 Episode 5, Coquilles.

“If he were self-destructive, he wouldn’t be so careful,” says Will.

“Unless he’s careful about being self-destructive. Making angels to pray over him when he sleeps.”

Hannibal pauses, on his perch up on the mezzanine library. “Who prays over us, when we sleep?”

Looking down at Will, like an angel: high cheekbones, deep eyes. Shirt and tie the colour of drying blood, like the bottoms of the wings that this killer has flayed from his victims’ backs.

Will sighs. The answer is clear enough without him saying it. No one.

“On another topic,” says Hannibal. “If you’ve got a few moments, I’d like to try something new today. Something you might find therapeutic.”

“Sure,” says Will. “I’ve got loads of time. It’s not like I have a killer to catch or anything, before he makes any more angels out of people.”

“This could help with that, too. We’ve been talking about God and creation.”

“We’ve been talking about Jack Crawford and me.”

“Yes,” says Hannibal, and smiles. He walks to the ladder that leads down from the mezzanine and descends it, backwards. Will looks away before he’s seen to notice the surprisingly athletic way that the psychiatrist moves. Unusual for a man in a three-piece suit and polished shoes, not a hair out of place.

Will’s been noticing these things lately. He really tries not to. His life is fucked up enough without being attracted to his psychiatrist.

 _Another_ psychiatrist. Dr Lecter isn’t _his_ psychiatrist. They’re merely having…conversations.

Like this conversation. Flirting between Will’s case and Will’s own feelings. Searching for a murderer and for Will’s psyche at the same time.

What would Dr Lecter say if Will turned to him and said, “Why do I keep on wanting to kiss psychiatrists?”

Will knows what Dr Lecter would say. _You want to kiss psychiatrists because you’re attracted to people who can give you answers about yourself. You’re attracted to stability and clarity, because you don’t have any of your own._

He picks up his takeaway coffee cup and tries to drink out of it, before remembering that it’s empty.

Hannibal joins him at his desk and begins clearing objects off the glossy surface: books, notebooks, pens, inkwell. He stacks everything with neat precision on a nearby cabinet and, from the bottom of the cabinet, produces a large box. He puts it in the centre of the desk. The exact centre. The man does everything neatly.

 _That’s another reason I find him attractive_ , thinks Will, trying to drink from his empty coffee cup again. _I like the idea of order. It really has nothing to do with the man himself, at all. It’s all a symptom of my instability._

“What’s in the box?” he asks.

“Creation,” says Hannibal. He removes the lid of the box and Will peers inside.

Incredulously, Will says, “That’s… _Lego_.”

“Yes. Did you play with it, as a child?”

“Sometimes, yeah. Every kid does. Why on earth have you got a box of it here?” He looks around the office: furnished in antiques, lined by books and art. He can’t think of a less likely place to find a multi-coloured child’s toy.

“Let’s call it art therapy.” Hannibal takes another chair and carries it to the desk, setting it beside his own. “It feels good to create. Just as it feels good to destroy. These bricks allow a safe place to do both, and can open up some truths.”

“Dr Lecter, I don’t have time to play with plastic bricks. There’s a killer—”

“This killer thinks of the world like this box.” Hannibal takes the box and turns it upside down. A jumble of bricks, of all colours and shapes, clatters onto the desk. “He wants to impose order upon chaos. You’re putting yourself in his shoes.”

Will frowns. “With all due respect, Dr Lecter…”

Hannibal looks at him. There’s a tilt to his lip, a glint to his smile, which can only be described as…flirtatious?

“All right,” Will says. “But on one condition. You’ve got to play with it, too.”

“Agreed.”

They sit down, side by side, to build.

“Every killer has a design,” says Hannibal. “It’s what you look for, when you look for him. What begins with a formless urge, coalesces into a material act which defines the very essence of the person. What design will you choose, Will?”

Will doesn’t answer. He sorts through the bricks in front of him, letting himself to be drawn to whichever ones he feels like. Beside him, he senses Hannibal doing the same thing. Before long, he has a collection of bricks in a little pile—shades of brown, mostly—and he begins to build.

Sorting. Stacking. Searching, and building. It feels soothing. It reminds him of tying flies: a single absorbing action that allows the mind to be free of all the misery and blood and suffering that Will sees most of the time, when he closes his eyes. His world is reduced, for this moment, to a series of bricks. How they fit together.

And beside him, Hannibal works too. They’re absorbed in their separate tasks, which are the same task. Without looking, Will feels Hannibal as a warm, soothing presence. They sit close enough that their knees are nearly touching; sometimes their elbows barely brush together as they work. Will has never felt precisely comfortable with the psychiatrist. He’s not comfortable with anyone, of course. But in Hannibal’s case, he’s always felt the other man’s subtle fingers trying to prise into his mind.

Now, though…he feels comfortable. Trusting.

It’s a subtle yet momentous change between the two men. As he builds, Will smiles. The bricks are taking shape under his fingers into the figure of a dog. Four paws, floppy ears, a tail that’s on a hinge so it can wag up and down. It looks a bit like Winston.

_What begins with a formless urge, coalesces into a material act which defines the very essence of the person._

This is his essence, then, according to Hannibal: a homeless dog, looking for love and security. Well, it’s not flattering, but there are worse things to be, he supposes. He turns the Lego dog over in his hands, makes the tail wag up and down. It’s a good little dog: well-built. He’s pretty proud of it, to tell the truth.

He grins, and turns to Hannibal to show him, and…

“You bastard,” he says.

***

 (art by <http://aeroplaneblues.tumblr.com>, by commission for this story. Please only reproduce with credit.)

***

 

“You built…a cathedral,” states Will.

“It’s loosely based on Notre-Dame de Reims,” says Hannibal. “Unfortunately I couldn’t find sufficient bricks to make the rose window above the central portal. Perhaps I should invest in more Lego.”

“I was building a dog. And you’re worried about a rose window?”

“I like your dog,” says Hannibal. “It’s charming.”

“You said that what we built reflects our inner soul. Do you think my inner soul is _charming_?”

Hannibal looks from Will, to the dog, and back again. “Yes. I do.”

_Now would be the time to kiss him. Right now. When he’s just called me charming and when we’ve been talking about inner souls and just sitting here, playing together._

But kissing Hannibal Lecter wouldn’t create order out of chaos. It would just create a whole different kind of chaos.

“My soul is full of murder,” says Will. “It’s dark and frightening. It frightens me.”

“Nevertheless,” says Hannibal, holding his gaze. “I find it charming.”

So easy, right now, to lean over. Close the distance between them. Kiss his psychiatrist, over the Lego bricks.

Instead, Will reaches over and takes Hannibal’s cathedral in both hands. Deliberately, he lifts off the roof. He puts his own Lego dog inside, and replaces the roof.

“You haven’t built a cathedral,” he says. “You’ve built a dog house.”

If he expected Hannibal Lecter to be offended by this, he’s disappointed. Hannibal looks delighted.

“You’ve found a home for your creation inside the walls of my creation,” he says. “That’s a considerable demonstration of trust, Will.”

“It’s just Lego.”

“Nothing is just Lego.” Hannibal puts his hand over Will’s on the desktop.

It’s the first time they’ve touched.

Will doesn’t like to be touched by people in general. But this touch is both soothing and exciting.

_A considerable demonstration of trust._

_What begins with a formless urge, coalesces into a material act._

Will leans over the desk, over the scattered spare bricks and their hands, one on top of the other. He lifts up his chin and he presses his lips against Hannibal’s.

He expects Hannibal to recoil. To put his hands on Will’s shoulders and politely disengage. To cite professional standards and distance.

Hannibal doesn’t. He moves neither backwards or forwards. But his lips press back against Will’s, and his eyes close, and he kisses Will back. A soft, lingering kiss.

Will is the one who draws back first. His heart is pounding, and he can’t breathe properly.

“I—” He swallows. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“Yes, you do,” says Hannibal. “As an empath, you are highly sensitive to your own emotions. And also to mine.”

He kisses Will this time: another soft kiss. But this one, being a second kiss, contains the promise of more.

Then Hannibal stands, removing his hand from on top of Will’s. “I was right. The Lego was very useful, therapeutically.”

Will stares at him. “That was therapy? That kiss?”

“Everything is therapy. But right now, as you say: you have an angel-maker to catch.”

“But…don’t we have something to discuss? All the implications of…” Will gestures over the desk, although he doesn’t mean the Lego dog and the Lego cathedral. “…Of this?”

“We’ll discuss it in great detail,” says Hannibal. “And, I hope, we’ll explore every permutation of this emotion, and this trust. Perhaps, together, we can create something new, and very special.”

He walks to the office door and opens it.

“But for now, Jack Crawford needs you to catch a murderer.”

Will leaves, in a daze. His lips are tingling with the sensation of having kissed Hannibal. He feels like he’s sleepwalking, again.

It’s only when he’s back in his car, reaching for his phone to call Jack, that he feels something in the breast pocket of his plaid shirt. Something small, and hard, and flat.

He takes it out. It’s a simple symbol, made of two pieces of interlocked red Lego. In the shape of a heart.


End file.
